Core Formation in the Lab

One important question in paleoclimate is how to warm polar regions
with Planet Earth was built in a very tough neighborhood: a world of violent impacts, swirling clouds of debris, and heaving oceans of silicate magma and molten iron. OES postdoc Maylis Landeau is investigating these events in a novel way — with fluid dynamics experiments in the lab. Working with Hopkins graduate Ben Hirsh, former OES postdoc Renaud Deguen, and OES PI Peter Olson, and using ordinary liquids — silicone oils for magma and saline solutions for molten iron — Landeau has simulated the environment in which Earth’s central core formed, but on a vastly reduced scale. Read more...

About OES

Open Earth Systems is a research project funded by the Frontiers in Earth System Dynamics Program of the National Science Foundation. The goal of Open Earth Systems is to interface state-of-the-art models of the atmosphere, ocean, crust, mantle, and core to better understand the causes and consequences of critical events in Earth's history.